


A Thousand Words, Or Simply Three

by Skogkatt



Category: Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
Genre: F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:12:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skogkatt/pseuds/Skogkatt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny, faced with a new mistress of vastly inferior rank, ruminates on the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Words, Or Simply Three

**Author's Note:**

  * For [breathedout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathedout/gifts).



> Thanks to my excellent betas, ivy and Vae!

She had not always looked like a skeleton. That was how the girl saw her, she knew. It chafed that the opinion of such an awkward twit should matter at all, but she couldn't help repressing a flinch whenever those anxious grey eyes fixed upon her. The girl was stupid, clumsy, ill-mannered. She was forever chewing her finger, or coming to dinner in a rumpled skirt and lumpy homemade jumper. She was a slovenly child, not a mistress. Not a lady. 

Yet still Danny wished that when the girl saw her, she would light inside with recognition of the strength and beauty Rebecca had known.

When she was young, so long ago, she'd done alright for herself--was still doing alright for herself, damn it--but the loss of her Lady ached more keenly with each passing day, especially with this interloper claiming the name of Mrs. de Winter. It had been tolerable so long as Danny had sole charge of the empty house, the rooms, the azaleas. She could imagine that Rebecca was only away for a day or two, or even for a few weeks. She might come home this very evening and wear the fine dressing gown Danny had laid out for her. So sheer you could see your hand right through it. She was off sailing, or at a house party in Somerset. She was laughing, sleeping with men, or women, or both. She would come home and tell Danny everything while Danny brushed her hair, stroking gently, and pulling hard. They would play their old, familiar game of control. Danny would feign indifference, would pretend there was no aching throb underneath the skirts of her frumpy service gown while Rebecca described licking another cunt, and tasting the salt of it, like drinking the sea. Her Lady had always so loved the sea. 

Rebecca would laugh gaily, pretending it didn't hurt when Danny yanked on those brilliant dark tresses. Stifling the gasps of painful desire. Neither of them had any use for gentleness. They were tough women, full of vitality. Or so they had been once. 

She'd come to Haxton Manor in the winter. January 1915, two months a widow, and only eighteen. Rebecca, at ten, with her cherubic face, always the picture of perfection. She was a tease even then, goading her young cousins, and making everyone from the stable hands to the cook sweet on her. She always knew exactly what she wanted, but though she demanded a great deal, she had a knack for discerning others' deepest desires, and she did reward those who proved useful. When the dour governess arrived, Rebecca decided that what she wanted was a friend and conspirator, and furthermore that what the Widow Danvers needed was a purpose, and a love.

"Danny," Rebecca had said, upon that first introduction. "I shall call you Danny. You don't really feel like a stuffy old Missus, do you?" 

Thus she became Danny, and she would remain Danny ever after, even when she lay in her grave. 

She knew better than to try too hard to keep Rebecca in check. The child would roam where she pleased, and take whatever she wanted. She would allow herself to be caught in the hayloft at dawn with her cousin Jack, revelling in the unfortunate discoverer's shock. Danny knew it was part of the game, that shock. And she refused to play. She would instead guide Rebecca with a firm hand into the house, and bathe her and dress her, and brush the straw from her hair. She would set her to French lessons, and never speak of what had passed. Rebecca would play along meekly, lips curving in a tender, sly smile as she conjugated verbs. She did love Danny in her own way, as she loved Jack, and half a dozen others.

At fifteen, Rebecca had a passion for painting that lasted only through one dreary autumn. "Stand there, Danny," she said. "Stand just so." And thus half a dozen afternoons passed, and half a dozen portraits were drawn and discarded. Danny didn't mind the standing, took it as the test it was meant to be. Stand still, don't move, don't give up control. Jack was not a good subject. He'd never mastered the art of self-discipline.

Late that November, they found a black fox wandering the grounds, and Rebecca crowed with delight. "Hold it. Grab its throat and clutch its feet. Marvelous creatures. I must take your likenesses together!" The wind was high that day, blowing in from the moors, and Danny repressed shivers under her brown woolen coat. The fox struggled, frightened and vicious, but Rebecca only laughed. "Make it stay still, Danny! Press the throat harder."

"I cannot subdue it for long, my lady," Danny said. 

"No," said Rebecca. "It's not the sort of beast who'll be kept, but you might hold it a while, if you're lucky."

That portrait was the only one Danny had made sure to salvage when Rebecca inevitably tossed it away. She'd captured the blush and the longing in Danny's face, and the fierce frightful panic in the fox's. It was not without love, she told herself. It was a reminder of the way things stood. Rebecca, her Lady, her sly, ferocious wonder. She would not be kept, but sometimes, if Danny was lucky, she would be held for a while. 

Danny learned all her loves and hates, the ins and outs of her moods and tempers, when to apply pressure and when to ease off. Because Rebecca wanted the pressure. She begged for it in breaths and glances, in contrary challenging glares. She was sixteen the first time it went truly beyond what could be dismissed as the intimacy afforded a caregiver and her ward. The hair brushing routine with its anticipatory air turned harder, brighter, until Danny wondered that electricity wasn't making her hair stand up straight. 

"I kissed a young lady at Lady Trentham's garden party," Rebecca said. "Very naughty. Anyone might have found us out."

Their eyes met in the mirror, and Danny could see in Rebecca's the knowledge that her dowdy governess-turned-lady's-maid was all awash in jealous desire. She smirked, never breaking the gaze, even while Danny wrapped a thick rope of hair around her palm and yanked. The gasp that followed was equal parts torture and release.

Rebecca refused to look away, even as she opened her robe, and tugged her chemise low to expose one perfect breast. She was only a little curvier than Danny, but what curves she had were exactly as they should be, and she knew it.

If Danny hadn't been lost long before, she would have been at that moment. 

Rebecca became mistress of Haxton Manor in her seventeenth year, and Danny was her right hand woman. Together they worked to make the house run exactly as Rebecca liked. Danny bowed to Rebecca's taste, and took pleasure in the routines of consultation about menus, and flowers, and guest lists for dinner parties. The Manor was too small for balls, but they did have the room for card parties and salons. Every day was lively, with comings and goings. Danny felt at home, useful, wanted.

When Rebecca married, she insisted on taking Danny with her, forcing the old housekeeper to retire. Manderley was theirs, and Danny could bear sharing Rebecca with Maxim, just as she could bear sharing her with anyone, so long as she had her own special place. So long as Rebecca confided in her, and goaded her, and occasionally shook and trembled in Danny's embrace like the storm-tossed azaleas she so cherished, soft and wet. 

Now she was gone, and Danny could not forget, and would not wish to. She stared out at the sea and listened to its roar, imagining that she could hear Rebecca laughing over the waves. How she would laugh at the milksop schoolgirl who tried to fill her shoes, who feared Danny like a monster under the bed, a living skeleton, a horror. She had not always looked like that. She had been a lover and beloved once. If Rebecca could not have Manderley, then no one should have it at all. 

When the fire was set, she took only the painting. She never looked back.

**Author's Note:**

> Image believed to be in the public domain, from http://vintageprintable.swivelchairmedia.com


End file.
